From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Feb 18 2002 - 12:27:38 MST
On Mon, Feb 18, 2002 at 10:29:12AM -0800, BigBooster quoted:
> "This is the Golden Age of Knowledge
>
> Estimated years it took for knowledge to double*
I wonder where the sources of all these numbers are? They seem to be
like other dramatic statistics (area of rainforest cleared every year,
children killed by sanctions against Iraq, increases/decreases in
criminality) that are told and re-told again and again to bolster a
popular position, but which nobody ever checks or can name their source.
So, how could we measure actual progress? I have seen some numbers based
on number of scientific journals, papers or Ph.D. theses, but that only
works as long as the average knowledge in them remains constant and
economic or structural changes doesn't affect them. Amount of published
unique text might be another scale (presumably the knowledge is equal to
10% of it, by Sturegon's law :-), although now the amount of web has to
be taken into account.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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